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Two recent films set in England–Steven Soderbergh's Black Bag, from a screenplay by David Koepp, and Adolescence, a
four-part Netflix
miniseries directed by
Philip Barantini from a
teleplay by Jack Thorne
and Stephen
Graham—share the
general theme of
detectives hunting
actual or potential
murderers. Beyond
that, they could not be
more different.
Black Bag begins
with George Woodhouse
(Michael Fassbender), a
British intelligence
agent, traversing the
nightspots of Soho to
meet his superior,
Meacham (Gustaf
Skarsgard). The
mission Meacham has for
George is dire: someone
has stolen the
top-secret software
program known as
Severus and sold it to
Russian agents.
George has one week to
discover the thief, or
else the Russians will
use Severus to cause a
nuclear meltdown that
will kill thousands.
Meacham identifies five
suspects, all
high-level operatives
in MI6. One of
them is George's wife
Kathryn (Cate
Blanchett).
George and
Kathryn have been
married for years and
have remained happy
despite the necessity
for secrecy that their
profession demands. One
asks the other a
question, and the usual
answer is "black
bag"—i.e. the
answer is a state
secret.
Themes of erotic
intrigue and criminal
conspiracy have been
staples of Soderbergh's
movies throughout his
career, and Black
Bag has both those themes in excelsis. That
becomes plain early in
the film, when George
and Kathryn invite the
other four
suspects—Freddie
(Tom Burke), James
(Rege-Jean Page),
Clarissa (Marisa
Abela), and Zoe (Naomie
Harris)--to dinner.
George, an expert an
interrogation, warns
Kathryn to avoid the
sauce, which has been
spiked with truth
serum. Besides
working together
closely, the other
guests are also
romantically
involved. The
evening becomes a
series of confessions,
not so much
professional as sexual,
that ends with Clarissa
stabling Freddie in the
hand with a knife.
That same night, Meacham dies of what appears to be a heart
attack. George's suspicions are inflamed, all the more when he
discovers a discarded ticket for a movie Kathryn said she never
saw. This is enough for him to order spy-satellite surveillance on
Kathryn when she travels on a mission to Zurich. And from there
I have to say, "Black bag."
Some reviewers have compared Black Bag with Out of Sight, Soderbergh's 1998 crime caper starring George Clooney and
Jennifer Lopez. I think an even more apt comparison is with
Soderbergh's first hit, 1989's sex, lies, and videotape. In that film,
he builds tremendous amounts of tension and suspicion through
the device of a young man who compulsively records the intimate
confessions of various women. Black Bag gives Soderbergh the
opportunity to use recording technology, vastly more advanced
than that available at the time of sex, lies, and videotape, to
ratchet up pressure on several fronts, making the film a sleek, fast
-moving entertainment.
Black Bag exudes an atmosphere halfway between the queasiness
of John Le Carre and the luxury of Ian Fleming. (The presence of
Pierce Brosnan as a disapproving boss adds to the Fleming vibe.)
It looks sensational, thanks to the production design of Philip
Messina and the photography and editing of Soderbergh himself,
under his usual pseudonyms of Peter Andrews and Mary Ann
Bernard. The cast is fine, with Fassbender and Blanchett
perfectly cast as a couple enigmatic even to each other.
If Black Bag can be faulted, it's that it's a little too glossy, coasting
on its elegant surface. No one will ever make the same accusation
against Adolescence. From beginning to end, the miniseries asks
unanswerable questions that cut deep and leave wounds. But the
experience is riveting and moving in a way television rarely is.
Adolescence takes place in a mid-sized English town; through an
aside early in the first episode, we learn the town is Doncaster, in
South Yorkshire. At the beginning, Detective Inspector Luke
Bascombe (Ashley Walters) receives an early-morning phone call
from his son Adam (Amari Bacchus), who says he has a stomach
ache and asks to be excused from school. This is the umpteenth
time Adam has requested this. Bascombe and his partner,
Detective Sergeant Misha Frank (Faye Marsay), banter about
Adam's stomach aches and Bascombe's attempts to quit smoking
by substituting apples for cigarettes. Then they and a phalanx of
squad cars arrive at a suburban row house, break down the door,
and arrest a suspect, Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper), a frail-looking,
13-year-old boy.
In a brilliant use of single-take cinematography, Barantini and
photographer Matthew Lewis zero in on the terrified Jamie as he
is transported to the police station, booked, fingerprinted, strip
-searched, and taken to interrogation. Jamie's father Eddie
(Graham) is dumbfounded and outraged for his son. He protests
Jamie's innocence right up to the moment that Bascombe and
Frank reveal closed-circuit camera footage showing
incontrovertibly that Jamie stabbed his schoolmate Katie Leonard
to death.
The various Law & Order franchises featured teenage murderers
to the point that, if an adolescent appeared in an episode, it was
nearly certain he or she was the perp.
Adolescence, having four hours instead of one, digs far deeper
than L&O. Its remaining three episodes adhere to the one-day,
one-take premise, and what the adults find is the opposite of
comforting.
The second episode, set two days after Jamie's arrest, depicts
Bascombe and Frank going to Jamie's school to discover his
motives for killing Katie. What they find are overworked teachers
and administrators struggling to deal with the chaotic lives of
their students. Through Adam, Bascombe learns of an
underground world of tribal allegiances ruled by social media and
filled with cyberbullying. Adam informs his father about how this
world of "incels," "red pills" and the "manosphere" turned Jamie
and Katie—literally—into deadly enemies. Bascombe, in turn,
comes to understand why Adam seeks to be excused from school
so often.
The third episode, set seven months after the murder, takes place
in a juvenile detention facility. Briony Ariston (Erin Doherty), a
court-appointed psychologist, interviews Jamie for a pre
-sentencing report. By the end of the session, with Jamie taken
back to his cell, Briony is in tears. So will you be, after you see
Owen Cooper's performance. Here you see clearly that Jamie has
a rage inside him that makes him capable of murder;
simultaneously, he seems even more vulnerable and pitiable than
he did in the first episode. Cooper was 14 and a novice to acting
when he filmed this episode; his performance is so volcanic, and
yet so delicately nuanced, that it makes you eager to see what he
will accomplish in the future.
The fourth episode, set 13 months after the murder, is the saddest
of all. It is Eddie's birthday; he, wife Manda (Christine Tremarco)
and daughter Lisa (Amelie Pease) try their best to make it a good
day despite the elephant in the room. But the elephant is
rampaging. Someone writes "NONCE" (a British slang term for
"pedophile") across Eddie's van in yellow spray paint, and the
neighbors pretend to have seen nothing. Jamie calls from the
detention center to wish his father a happy birthday; in that call,
he makes an announcement that completes his father's misery.
In this episode, we see from where Jamie inherited his temper.
We also see that Eddie and Manda will never draw another happy
breath. They will spend their lives wondering what they could
have done differently, what they could have said to divert Jamie
from a murderous path. The episode ends with Eddie making a
small, heartbreaking gesture that emphasizes his helplessness in
the face of anguish.
Movies have told us over and over of boys and girls who hate each
other at first sight and end up falling in love. Our own life
experience, at least for those of us of a certain age, tells us the boy
and the girl are more likely to see each other years later at a class
reunion, exchange a few pleasantries, and go back to their
lives. Thorne and Graham's teleplay, incisive and disturbing,
knocks all those expectations to the floor. How did Katie Leonard
turn into a cyberbully and Jamie Miller into a murderer? Are
social media to blame, or are they merely a conduit for confused
adolescent passions? Graham based the idea for Adolescence on a
series of knife attacks on young girls in the U.K., and those
incidents are just as puzzling as the one in Adolescence. The
aftermath, meanwhile, is intolerable. One of the most poignant
victims is Jade (Fatima Bojang), Katie's hot-tempered best friend.
It becomes obvious that Katie was the only stabilizing influence in
Jade's life, and her death leaves Jade, essentially, with nothing.
The only happy ending in Adolescence is for Bascombe; he
resolves to spend more time with Adam, who obviously wants and
needs his guidance. They are laughing together as they drive off
at the end of the second episode. A minute later, Eddie lays a
bouquet of flowers at the makeshift memorial for Katie. Adolescence, in the end, is as much as anything a plaintive lament
for what might have been.
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